Perhaps as she painted, he would create. Yes. God, why hadn't he thought of it before? They could create together. She online and he as he watched. Then he could upload his creation to her, share it to her Facebook page, tweet it to her feed.
His excitement built, taking him to a dizzying rapture as he worked, and so engrossed was he that he almost missed the sound of laughter bubbling up from the carpet and snaking out from the power cords. When he did notice it, he couldn't ignore it no matter how hard he tried. He swore he felt his veins shrink away from his skin. Something was behind him. Something had taken shape in the shadows. Maybe if he didn't look, it would go away. Maybe if he held his breath, the heaviness in the air would dissipate.
But it didn't. The laughter transformed into a low moan, and the heaviness in the air – that feeling that something was staring at the back of his head-- grew as sick and humid as blood. If he wasn't careful, those things would merge together into something more solid than a shadow. It would take shape before long.
"If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, Speak to me:"
A whisper, like the sound of rubble showering down the side of a mountain, came from the corner of his living room. No words distinguished themselves from the sound, and it was that fact alone that made the hair stand on William's arm. He dared a glance from the corner of his eyes. Did he see a movement? Did a subtle rush of dispelled air make its way across the room?
His peripheral vision showed Hannah moving into view on screen, but William's pleasure shrank in the face of a shiver of fear. He couldn't enjoy himself. He couldn't lose himself. How could he, when he knew he was no longer alone?
I turned Hannah over to the custody of her hotel room right around midnight. I was loath to let her go, believe me, but after the mind-blowing head, she seemed to need a coma to come back around. I tried to at least find out why she was wanted, but after a solid hour of questioning she wouldn't budge one inch. Nice detective me gave way to hard ball detective to no avail. No matter how I phrased the question, she wouldn't explain why she was wanted. If left to me, I could easily have given her reason for being wanted, but she'd have none of that either. I scuffed my boots all the way down the worn carpet of the hotel hallway, jumped into my BMW, and headed home.
As I drove into my driveway and plopped a loonie into the Colonel's back I realised something that made by boots just a little happier. I could find her website. It shouldn't be too hard, and maybe, just maybe, there'd be some old image of her frozen in mid stroke. Sounded pretty desperate, but I figured I could be okay with desperate. It was a hell of a lot better than feeling numb.
Once I gained access to the net, I began to feel just a little guilty. I felt like some stalker invading Hannah's privacy. On the heels of guilt came rationalization. She'd never know. And what difference would it make to a woman who'd already bared her bosom to millions world-wide and swallowed what I thought was a pretty substantive load of come in the men's room. I'm sure if I had thought to ask for the address, she'd have gladly pencilled it onto my forehead quicker than God could say, "I am."
I did a search on "Hannah" and received a million hits for my supreme intelligence. I'd have to do better than that. Immediately, I tried narrowing it down to "Hannah painter". That made the computer issue its equivalent of a rude belch. I remembered Hannah telling me she had her friend embed the word nudity within her page coding. I Googled with as many words as I could fit into the search engine, typing in, Hannah, art, painter, and to top it all off, the word nude. She came back within the top 10. Thank the great good lord, he'd seen fit to shorten 40 wandering years in the desert of technology to 40 short seconds. Now to make my move into the promised land.
First, I got an opening page, all black but for a few command buttons. One, labelled, free peek, blinked. I clicked in. The free peek lasted thirty seconds. But in that short time, I managed to see enough flesh and paint to set my small spark of curiosity aflame. I returned to the homepage and found the Enter Site button.
I had to subscribe with a credit card number, which precluded my worries about her knowing I'd checked up on her. But I'd already decided to tell her she interested me enough to warrant supporting the arts. I conjured a user name and password then I was in.
I wasn't prepared for what awaited me. It some ways it was incredibly banal stuff: no true excitement of real porn with girls doing heaven could only imagine things on camera, but I couldn't tear myself away. The sheer normalcy of the act, the sense that I was a voyeur in the most authentic definition of the word, made the back of my scalp tingle. She never looked at the camera. There were times when she leaned over, letting her breasts go slack without consideration for how they might appear. No vanity seemed to permeate the scene. It was as though she didn't know she was being watched.
I felt myself grow hard again, and I couldn't help pushing down my jeans and working my prick till I let go a strangled moan. Twice in one night and I still couldn't get enough. I didn't think even an addict would need so many hits so frequently in one night.
I wanted to dream about her. I needed some excuse for another solitary masturbatory session that followed an hour's worth of watching her breasts jiggle as she made large, quick strokes across the canvas. I lay on my sofa because I was too lazy to make my way to bed, my legs spread wide, telling myself I'd have prolonged, terribly erotic, and yes, filthy, dreams so I could pretend as I made my own large, quick strokes that her creamy skin was pressed against mine, not my skin against a hard video image. No such luck. After a year of celibacy and the session in the restroom, I was like a man glutting on water after forty years in the desert.
I woke to early morning rain and cursed because I'd wanted to clean up the garden for winter. I couldn't very well shovel loam around the base of my prized rose bushes in a down pour; it would be more like shoveling muck and the shock of weight and cold might make my babies weep.
When I fetched myself up to some semblance of a sitting position I remembered my date and, more interestingly, my date's presence on my computer screen. I stared across at my monitor, where I'd left it running and played a mock game of Pong in the form of a screen saver. I could watch again if I wanted, for a few minutes before work. Toss out another orgasm and start the day right.
Just as I planned to heave myself from the sofa, my cellphone vibrated on the desk top.
I knew it was Hannah.
The crocheted afghan my mother had passed along to me when I'd moved out, and that I'd kept slung across the back of the sofa, tangled in my legs. The more I struggled, the more I felt like a hot, microwaved corner store sub wrapped in yards of cellophane. Frustrated, I flung my legs, afghan and all, to the floor and hopped across the cheap carpet to the phone. Grabbing the receiver, I croaked out a froggy hello. Damn. So much for sounding sophisticated.
"Daniel?"
Well, the voice was feminine, but definitely not fantasy material. I had to grab my throat and squeeze to keep from groaning out loud into the mouthpiece.
"Morning, Mom."
"Daniel, it's Mother."
I couldn't help rolling my eyes. Mom had a knack for stating the obvious.
"Oh? I thought perhaps the devil had found a way to reach me."
"Daniel, don't be sarcastic. Are you still there? We miss you. Jesse doesn't understand why you haven't visited."
"I've been busy. You both know that."
There was a long pause, I suspected Mom was motioning for my sister to pick up the other line. Either that, or she was mentally preparing herself for the drama of sounding pitiful. A faint click sounded. At least I'd be spared the theatrics.
"Jesse, are you on the line?" I asked, knowing the answer.
A long pause. Yup. She was there.
"Get off the line, Jesse," I said.
Mom answered instead. " Don't be so suspicious. Jesse is right here with me. And God knows I'm thankful. What with your father gone and all. Wouldn't he be proud of the way she's taking care of me."
I must
be slipping; what made me think theatrics would be an either or?
"Jesus, Mom, you're not an invalid. Jesse doesn't need to take care of you. You're only 55. Let her go."
"What are you talking about? Your sister comes and goes as she pleases. This house isn't some prison. And you didn't escape from it. What exactly is going on with you? You haven't been to visit. You haven't called. You haven't been to church."
Mom's voice grew disapproving. "It's obvious from your language you've slipped in your devotions."
Slipped? I'd never done any devotions. Again she saw what she wanted to see. She hoped I carried on with the family's mass public deception. I had a terrible urge to fill the silence with unintelligible gibberish. Shock the pants off her. She didn't give me the chance.
"We're worried. You've only come here less than a dozen times in the last two years, and only once since Christmas."
"I haven't felt right going, Mom."
"Don't be silly. We miss you."
I heard a chuckle, and knew immediately that it was Jesse.
"Well, I miss you. Jesse can bite my bum."
Mom laughed. And strangely, it relieved me. I got a quick and vivid image of her with a kerchief wrapped and tied around her still black hair, the green eyes so much like mine, narrowed downward as she smiled her true smile, the one that had hardly come out to play in the months Dad got sicker.
"Come for supper, Daniel. I'm baking beans and brown bread. You could even come early and we could have tea. Just like before."
"Is three okay?"
"Three is perfect."
Three was a close enough number by the time I arrived. Jesse opened the door, casting a long silhouette into the hallway. For a second I remembered our childhood game of catch the shadow. We'd play it at dusk when the sun was low in the sky and the summer nights slowed its descent for what seemed an eternity. Born four years after me, I only deigned to play with Jesse when no one else could or would come over. She had been a pest back then and I'd beat her up on a daily basis.
"You're looking nasty," I said pushing past her.
"And you're looking uglier than I remember."
She closed the door, pressing her weight into it until it clicked. Her mouse brown hair had been braided into two ropes that hung to her flat chest. With the summer freckles marching across her face in orderly lines, she looked as much the kid as I'd just remembered.
"About damn time you got here," she said.
I threw my light jacket onto the Newell post that led upstairs to our respective bedrooms.
"It's not even three."
She rolled her eyes at me. I found myself wishing they'd pop right out and make their way toward my boot. I'd show her how good they could roll.
"I didn't mean you were late, I meant you've been lax."
What could I say to that? Nothing. At least nothing she'd want to hear, or that I'd want to get into. So, instead of coming up with some smart remark that would prove to her once again, that I was the great lord of all wit, I decided to turn my nose straight to the stuccoed ceiling, proving to her that I was, at least, the great lord of all.
She followed me down the hall. Her jeans made a scuffing sound as she walked. I knew that sound well. It usually meant that her jeans were too tight and that she'd undoubtedly be on a diet. That explained her mood. Damn fine position for me to be in--keeping company with a starving she-wolf and a lonely, half-manic old biddy.
"Damn fine position for me to be in," I grumbled.
Jesse showed no sympathy. "Stop your whining."
She stopped short in the hall between my graduation picture and her baby portrait.
"Mom's waiting in the parlour." She grimaced at that and put her chubby hand on my shoulder. We stared at each other.
The parlour, to Jesse and me, might as well have been the great open mouth of an Anaconda. You perched there in its starched formality, with the drapes pulled open to look inviting, but the blinds always kept you from seeing outside. And while you perched there on a stiff antique sofa, you waited for the inevitable squeeze. And then the equally inevitable swallow where you stayed in the belly of suffocating manners until you could be digested and shat out or vomited up, depending on whether you were agreeable or not.
This was where Mom waited.
Despite the fact that she held tightly to a china teacup, and perched on the edge of the mustard---she'd call it golden---sofa, I truly was glad to see her. The fact that I felt the stirring of homesickness made me smile wide with self-satisfaction. Perhaps, old Dan boy, I wasn't past saving after all.
"I wasn't sure you'd come," Mom whispered. My smile vanished.
"I said I would."
She put down the cup, but her shoulders didn't relax. "I know."
I crossed the Oriental carpet, careful not to scuff.
"I'm sorry, Mom." I reached for her. "I don't know what to say."
She shook her head. "Just come have some tea."
I dropped my arms telling myself she hadn't seen them and couldn't, therefore, offer a hug. I sat next to her on the sofa. Jesse stood at the French door fiddling with the knob.
"Should I bring in the tray?" she asked then hurried away when Mom bobbed her chin up and down.
I bit the inside of my cheek. "Aw, Mom, you're not pulling the tea service thing are you?"
"Well, you're company."
"I'm not company; I'm family. I want a mug."
"But Jesse and I prepared the tray."
I eyed Jesse like she was about to pull a weapon.
"I won't drink any."
Mom sighed in that customary way she had when I was being petulant and she didn't want to give in.
"You feel like company now a days."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
She leveled me with her stare. "It means I see you less than I see your Uncle Sebastian."
"He's way the hell in Ontario."
"I know. And don't swear."
"I came at Christmas."
"So did your Uncle Sebastian."
Clearly, I wasn't going to win the battle. I wondered briefly if I really did want to win; it didn't mean that much. After all, she had a lot of things to sort through. Letting her have this victory would surely be worth that meal.
"Did you really bake beans?"
She nodded. "Can't you smell them?"
I took a sniff; indeed, I must have been so nervous my senses had shut down. The aroma of molasses and bacon mingled quite nicely with the smell of hot yeast.
"You made the brown bread, too."
"I knew if anything would get you here, it would be brown bread and beans. You should have brought that delightful Gina. I saw her at the grocery store yesterday."
Gina. Now that was a jolt. I wondered if Mom knew how delightfully wild delightful Gina had become. I actually enjoyed the thought of the full grown woman--not the child Mom obviously thought of--breaking bread and conversing lightly about the women she'd slept with recently, how she loved swallowing a few good pills and how often she spent time on internet looking up lesbian porn. I started to envision the whole dialog right there at my mother's expensive oak coffeetable with the candles dripping wax into their bowls. Of course, Gina would mention the sexual pleasures that wax could afford and mother would agree, yes, yes, there's nothing like hot wax searing your nipples. I broke into laughter.
"What's so funny," my mother demanded.
"Nothing," I said and started like someone had shot me when I heard the rattling of the tea service. Great. She had prepared it. I had the feeling it was some sort of message and I wasn't in the mood for a message, no matter how subtle.
"I told you I didn't want the service. I want a mug."
"It's the proper thing," she said.
Jesse came up beside me and placed the whole kit and kaboodle onto the oak surface. She looked at me, and I looked at her. My stomach ached, my throat hurt. I felt as though I was being dragged down to a bottomless nothing.
"I don't want it," I s
aid, hearing the pitch in my voice. "Fuck, Mom."
She pouted at me and I leapt to my feet, sensing that in one second the adrenaline would overcome me and I'd not be able to control where my fists or feet went. I couldn't breathe. My hands even went to my throat as I strangled out another stream of curses.
"Daniel," Mom said. "Language."
"What are you doing?" I demanded. "What the fuck is all this?"
I leaned forward to grasp the silver handle of Mom's antique, and grossly ornate pot. I poured a hot cup of Tetley tea, and kept pouring until the rose patterned China cup overflowed. Mom's gasp was music to my ears.
As the tannin coloured liquid rose over the lip of the tray and dribbled onto the rug, I settled back onto the couch and stared expectantly at Mom. True to form, she dashed out into the kitchen to find something to sop up the stain.
If she was sending me a message, then she could consider it delivered.
Monday came quickly. And with it October. I went to work feeling slightly victorious. It wasn't every weekend I returned to the human race, and it wasn't every weekend that I resisted Mom's manipulations. So as I pulled into my parking spot and dropped a loonie into the colonel's back for old times' sake, I actually smiled. Thinking about what Gina would have to say about my impromptu grin made the smile even wider.
She stood pouring herself a cup of coffee in the employee kitchen. I stuffed my hands into the pockets of the dress pants I'd thrown on and gave her the irresistible business of a broad grin. She ignored me.
I leaned against the doorframe. Still, I got no response. I'd be damned if I'd be the first to talk; the smile was silver platter enough. I suddenly got an image of my head sitting on a plate, stupid grin plastered like stucco across my face and my headless body offering it to her as if it belonged to John the Baptist and she was Salome.
Miss You Mad: a psychological romance novel Page 5